Sharp contrasting tendencies in experience and thinking are apparent in suffering. Suffering, from an observed point of view, may turn a condition into an object – potentially objectifying the observable and missing the condition entirely. For those that do suffer, the subjective reality of pain is not an object, and it is not simply derived from an inner subjective attack or cognitive derailment of the self. In this perspective, pain and suffering may become its own form: a breach between the objective and subjective modes of experience. Pain can become something altogether incomprehensible, as the knowledge of itself never seems to acquire reassurance – a state of anticipation -- in order to properly manage and reason away the unavoidable imprisonments it always promises.

My painting House and Flowers is an attempt to expose any ideology suggesting that suffering is merely symptomatic and has a direct correlation to malady and/or personal breakdown. In some sense, suffering need not have correlative properties where bodily breakdown is necessary: music, poetry, art, and story, can cause states of pain, identify with pain, or release pain and oppose it somehow. Abstraction itself can be painful. Nevertheless, when the body and mind are crushed by accident or sickness as physical fact – a spirit of hope can always produce and receive beauty – though a different beauty becomes of itself – one that avoids signification. In a house where there is sickness and pain – flowers are present.